Carolina on my mind.......

Monday, June 29, 2009

...is in full swing at Casa Barker. We just returned from a visit to Florida to meet my newest nephew...Ethan...born Jan 18th. He is such a cutie-patootie (he takes after his Aunt--ME!)

Noah is playing baseball for the YMCA summer league and having a blast.

Mike is enjoying his new summer gig.....

I just started 4 weeks of summer school....

And we are looking forward to the upoming Fourth of July holiday and a visit from our friends from Virginia, the Brittons. Hopefully our celebration of the nation's 233rd birthday and our friends' visit will include a Greenville Drive Baseball game, some pool time, a cookout or two and lots of fireworks.....stay tuned...I will surely blog about it before summer is over, haha!!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Well it is Spring Break despite what the thermometer says...it is in the 50s today here in SC. I have great dreams of grandeur for the rest of the week..we'll see how much I actually get accomplished.

Returned yesterday from a few days at the lake with my girlfriends from Virginia. It was a great weekend...despite the rocky start. We all arrived Friday afternoon at different times from different locations (suburban DC, Virginia Beach, Jacksonville, NC and me from G'ville).

When a few of us met up to pick up the keys to our cabin, we were told that the previous tenants (a group of fishermen in for a local tournament) had not vacated the premises at 11am that morning as they were supposed to. In fact, the maid had been waiting outside the cabin since 10:30am and at 2:30pm they were no where to be found, and the cabin was full of their stuff.

Our realtor finally reached one of them by cell phone and told them they "needed to get their junk out." This apparently angered them because 2 hours later there was still no sign of them. By this time, everyone in our party had arrived and we were not happy. We tossed around the idea of going to get a drink and waiting them out. But common sense told us that despite our desire to start Happy hour, we needed to make sure we had a place to sleep that night.

So we trekked back to the rental office, and tried to find a solution. Fortunately, our agent was able to find another rental for us...and finally we were headed to our place.

Having seen both properties, the one we ended up in was WAAAYYY better than the one we had rented..more spacious, just perfect!!

Once we got settled in, the wine began flowing freely, we had a nice dinner and stayed up way too late catching up on each other's lives.

On Saturday we did a tour and tasting at Rosemont, a local winery, did a little shopping, and then back to the house for appetizers and drinks. We had all intention of heading out for an early dinner, but once again, our chatting went later into the evening than we planned, and since we were in a small lake town during the off season, we had trouble finding a place to dine later that night. We ended up at a Cracker Barrel of all places but that was fine.

Sunday the weather was gorgeous so after brunch we headed out to the deck and enjoyed the sunshine..too much. Most of us ended up with a wicked sun burn. But it was so much fun to relax, and enjoy the sun and conversation. Later that afternoon two of the girls had to head home (and back to reality). The remaining three of us had a relaxing evening (and more wine)..then headed out on Monday morning for our own return to reality. While I missed my family it was great to gather with friends and relax for a few days.

I have know these women for about 17 years and over that time we have married, changed jobs/careers, had kids, moved, bought/sold houses, etc. But somehow we have remained frends despite our lives beign so drastically different than they were when we met. And a few days away together once a year allows us to continue to remain friends, support each other through life and enjoy friendships that continue to stand the test of time.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Spring Break is 4 days away and I am sooooo ready for it to get here. I think this week is going to be a bit insane...if today is any indication. First of all it is Monday...enough said, right? Well today I was supposed to be observed at school during a math lesson. Mondays are crazy enough any way, so I decided to get to school early to make sure I was over-prepared for my day. As I was unpacking I realized that I left my flash drive at home (yeah, the one with ALL OF MY TEACHING STUFF!!) I told myself not to panic and went into survival mode..I have backups of most of what I needed for today...so that was fine. I fired off an email to DH who was at home to have him check and make sure my flash drive was in fact at home..it was (if I had lost that...well, we don't even want to do THERE!). The folks who were supposed to observe me ended up not showing up (all that planning for naught....anyway, I gave my boys a DARN good lesson on data, surveys and tally charts!!!)

Then one of my "little darlings" who is a bit of a handful (strong UNDERstatement) decided to show out ALL DAY TODAY!! Working my last nerve....

At about 11am my phone rings and the afterschool coordinator asks me if I can sub this afternoon for a 5th grade class...SURE!!!

Well...there is light at the end of the tunnel...I only have to teach for 3 more days because I took FRIDAY off and I am headed to Lake Gaston, NC for a girls getaway weekend....so in 96 hours I am not going to be thinking about flash drives, observations or my little darlings...I am going to be sipping a margarita and living the good life with my girls.....

Friday, March 27, 2009

Okay, go I thought a fire had been lit under me by my friend Kris, who I had been bugging since I met her to start blogging. She finally started and I felt compelled to resume my daily (okay, weekly, um monthly posts)...I had great intentions, but then life got int eh way and as I was updating my blog title and description for a contest I was entering, I realized i had yet again fallen off the blog wagon.

I got into blogging because we had plans to adopt a child from China, so I started a blog (they told me that was part of the process). Seriously. I "met" a lot of very cool people online that way through their adoption blogs. And I have to admit, I blogged on a regular basis then. But then we moved from Virginia to South Carolina and I felt like I needed to start a new blog to keep friends and family posted on our life here in the South. So that is how this one got started. Either I am really busy or my life is really boring because I just don't seem to have that much to blog about lately.

I still read lots of blogs each week- blogs my friends write, blogs from teachers, blogs from peoplelike me. And they all seem to have more to say than I do, and their funny. So I am going to try each week to find something witty or humorous to write about. My life is funny.....but by the time I edited to protect the innocent ..not so much!!So bear with me..it may be a bumpy ride, but by gosh..I am going to blog!!!

Monday, March 9, 2009

...okay, I know it has been a while. Too long really, but a lot has been going on....Noah has been keeping us on the run between sports, scouts, AWANA and school. And work (school) has been keeping me pretty busy too. But I FINALLY got my friend Kris to start blogging, so how would it look if I continued to be a slacker on here. I promise to return soon with some pictures and updates on our life here in SC...it is exciting...at least to us, but since YOU are checking out this blog you must be at least sort of interested, right????

Sunday, January 18, 2009

...but so much has been going one, and it is hard to put it into words sometimes. Anyway, a few of you have hinted to me about visiting my blog and finding nothing. So here goes....

First off- HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I had these dreams of grandeur of posting this whole look bak at 2008...well you see how far I got on that!! Maybe I will do one for 2009!!!

Anyway, here's the latest. In case you have not heard...we are no longer adopting from China. It is a long story...and one I don't really want out there floating in blog-land. I am not quite ready to share all the details...but some day I will. Don't worry we are fine..we actually made the decision back in October and pulled our dosier in November. This month will be a little hard because our LID group will be getting their referrals. We will share in their joy and can;t wait to see all the pictures, and stories from China. But we know this is God's plan for us, and we are confident that we will bring another child into our family year, she (or he) just won't be from China.

We had a great Christmas, right inthe middle of a glorious 16 day break from school. We spend a lot of time in our pajamas, playing wii, sleeping late after staying up late, watching movies., eating way too much, and enjoying time together as a afamily.

Now we are back in our regular routine...school, church, work, Scouts, Awana...in other words..craziness!! Noah is gearing up for the Scouts Pinewood derby and AWANA also has a similar derby this month. Mike and Noah (well mostly Mike) are busy designing and building both cars, and testing them out.

We finally found a church here in Greenville after looking for more than a year. It is called NewSpring Church and we LOVE it. It is very different from our church in Virginia. For one thing is is HUGE!! There are over 8000 members on 3 campuses (Anderson, Greenville and Florence SC) and they are opening another campus in Columbia later this year. Our Senior Pastor is Perry Noble and he is AMAZING. He actually preaches at the Anderson campus and it we watch him through live video feed in Greenville. It was wierd at first but he is very "larger than life" so you don't even notice he isn't right there. I was afraid Mike would not go for the whole mega church experience but he loves Perry, has connected with his message and he is on fire!! We went to a membership class last week and have begun to get plugged into a home group and volunteering (Mike has volunteered for the parking team...and is secretly wishing they let him drive one of the golf carts!). I want to do something in the Childrens Ministry but after dealign with little people all week, I think I am going to work on the registration team, which helps sign in kids and get them to the right classroom. Noah loves it too...they keep him "highly engaged" and he loves goign each Sunday.

Aside from that we are hoping to make a trip to Virginia early this spring, and we want to resume our famiy beach trip this summer. We also need to make a trip down to Florida to meet my new nephew Ethan, who was born just this morning!!

Well, that is all for now....I will work on updating this more often.....

Saturday, August 30, 2008

...Soccer season started again last night (yep, we have practices on Friday evenings) and I am going to be the team mom again this season (because I have so much EXTRA time on my hands, especially now that school is back in session!).

Noah is playing for the YMCA again- this season on the Cyclones. He is very excited, and we watched along with the other parents from the sidelines as he practiced. He has really picked up some great skills since last season. And he loves it, which is the most important thing. He got a chance to practice as the goalie during the first half of practice. He missed one kick and dove for another one and caught it. Fast forward to the second half of practice and another kid is playing goalie. This kid missed a kick at the end (the only one that came at him during practice) and a boy and girl on his team (this was a team scrimmage) came up to the goalie and started yelling at him for missing the kick.

My first thoughts were 1) poor little guy 2) ITS ONLY A GAME!! 3) Who raised these little brats 4) if that were Noah they were yelling at, I would have been out of my chair and kicked some 7- year old butt.

We were sitting between both of the coaches' wives and both jumped up to tell their husbands what had happened (they were working on skills with other kids). I am glad they did because if they hadn't, I would have at the end of practice.

We try and encourage Noah to do his best, play fair and treat eveyone with respect. Kind of a no brainer when you are a parent..obviously these kids parents were absent the day they taught that in Parent School.